Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie Tuckers.
Speaker 1: We just published on episode the other day on the
Speaker 1: science of addiction, and this is kind of the part two.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can probably listen to this episode without
Speaker 1: having listened to the previous one, but they go well together,
Speaker 1: so we recommend that viewing order let listening order rather.
Speaker 1: This episode is uh going to look at the future
Speaker 1: of addiction. Uh, And we're not talking about just what
Speaker 1: kind of crazy drugs would have in the future. Now,
Speaker 1: we're talking about how can we treat addiction in the future.
Speaker 1: What are some of the cutting edge and emerging techniques
Speaker 1: and technologies that will be at our disposal to deal
Speaker 1: with the disease of addiction. Yeah, and before we look
Speaker 1: at the future stuff, let's just kind of look at
Speaker 1: what's going on in the present. The number one driver
Speaker 1: of aids in the world is used heroin needles, particularly
Speaker 1: in countries where there's no needle exchange programs. So what
Speaker 1: if you could get rid of the root problem, you
Speaker 1: could eradicate heroin addiction or for that matter really any addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're not just talking instantly. Minds tend to turn
Speaker 1: to Africa, and certainly that's one of the areas concerned here,
Speaker 1: but other you know, countries that don't have needle exchange
Speaker 1: programs include such large UH population nations as China and Russia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that people don't, you know, at least people
Speaker 1: outside of the United States don't realize what in the
Speaker 1: city is problem. This is half a trillion dollars are
Speaker 1: spent worldwide to treat addiction. So here's just one little
Speaker 1: prism of the addiction problem in the US. And estimated
Speaker 1: one point four million Americans are addicted to cocaine, which
Speaker 1: was the reason for more than four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two thousand emergency department visits in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and is a leading cause of heart attack and stroke
Speaker 1: among people younger than age five. So the problem here,
Speaker 1: of course is that we have access and if you
Speaker 1: look at you know sort of where drugs are in
Speaker 1: the time continuum with history here, Um, we have more
Speaker 1: access to drugs than ever before, and more types of drugs,
Speaker 1: and what emerges here are some highly highly addictive substances.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about meth which creates one of the biggest
Speaker 1: boost of dopamine in the brain, and prolonged use of
Speaker 1: this can lead to psychotic like symptoms, walking about, strong hallucinations,
Speaker 1: and really violent behavior. And studies of the brain patterns
Speaker 1: of some long term matthews have shown that up to
Speaker 1: their dopamine producing cells have been damaged. So if you
Speaker 1: listened um to the other episode on this then you
Speaker 1: kind of know already that, uh, this is a situation
Speaker 1: where the person is just getting deeper and deeper into
Speaker 1: the whole because it's not about free will anymore, because
Speaker 1: the parts of your brain, the executive function have been
Speaker 1: so eroded by drugs that even if you wanted to stop,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: that's certainly the the anti drug messaging that I think
Speaker 1: needs to be focused on more often with myth amphetamy,
Speaker 1: because I was reading and according to neuro psychopharmacologist Carl Hart,
Speaker 1: there's actually no empirical evidence to support the claim that
Speaker 1: meth amphetamy causes one to become physically unattractive, which hopefully
Speaker 1: they've they're calming down on that, but for the longest,
Speaker 1: like like meth mouth you know, in the affirmation of
Speaker 1: the meth addict and just some sort of subhuman hyena
Speaker 1: person has been kind of the focus. When certainly that's
Speaker 1: flashy that works on a billboard a little easier, but
Speaker 1: the the reality of what's actually changing with the brain
Speaker 1: that is far scarier than some sort of jackal and
Speaker 1: hide show. I agree. I have seen the ads before
Speaker 1: where there's like this beautiful woman and then she takes
Speaker 1: out her false teeth and she takes off her makeup
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you ease her her methatic
Speaker 1: riddled face, and they are appealing to vanity. But vanity
Speaker 1: doesn't matter when addiction is highly routinized in your brain, Um,
Speaker 1: nobody cares anymore what they look like. So if you
Speaker 1: were to instead crack open the brain and show people
Speaker 1: this is how your brain is actually like completely mutating here,
Speaker 1: that might be a far more compelling story to people.
Speaker 1: The next one is another biggie, and that is of
Speaker 1: course heroin UH derived from opium, And of course this
Speaker 1: one has been wreaking havoc for for years and years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty of first time users will become addicted. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, two point four of the American population
Speaker 1: said they had tried heroin at least once. The source
Speaker 1: of that Department of Health, and withdrawal symptoms are really acute.
Speaker 1: They arrived just a few hours after a dose swears off,
Speaker 1: and because of this, users have a really high chance
Speaker 1: for relapse. Because we talked about this in the last episode. UM,
Speaker 1: at some point the addiction becomes less about chasing the
Speaker 1: high and more about chasing some sort of equilibrium and
Speaker 1: feeling normal again, which can only happen if you get
Speaker 1: more of the substance in your body. All right, and
Speaker 1: the next big one to hit might come as surprise
Speaker 1: because it's not crack cocaine. It is nicotine. Nicotine is
Speaker 1: a very addictive substance. But we often overlook this why UM,
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's legalized, right, something like of
Speaker 1: people who ever try cigarettes will become nicotine addicts. At
Speaker 1: some point, you can buy it legally at the store,
Speaker 1: at the gas station. Used to you could get out
Speaker 1: of a machine. UM. Someone's liable to and it's given
Speaker 1: its legality and an overall still social acceptance, UM, people
Speaker 1: are liable to give it to you without it being
Speaker 1: that big of a deal as well so, and it
Speaker 1: still looks cool on TV, right, Yeah, and it's not
Speaker 1: as big of a risk. And this is something that
Speaker 1: David Lyndon, a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University,
Speaker 1: pointed out. He said, you know, hey, if you have
Speaker 1: a bag of heroin, you're not going to do a
Speaker 1: whole bag of heroin. You know you're gonna overdose. But
Speaker 1: if you have a pack of cigarettes and you have
Speaker 1: ten or twenty of those cigarettes throughout the day, you
Speaker 1: get that little ding of dopamine each time. And he
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, he kind of like lined it to
Speaker 1: pa off s dog, right, so he said that we're
Speaker 1: really good at training or inner dog and sort of
Speaker 1: being like, oh, I need a little pick up right now.
Speaker 1: And you get that little dopamine um pleasure feeling from it,
Speaker 1: But you're not going to necessarily um render yourself unconscious
Speaker 1: or unable to work or any of those things. But
Speaker 1: still it is an addiction, and it is an addictive behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you hear about people being one or two back a
Speaker 1: day smoker. Whereas in the panel they pointed out that
Speaker 1: that even a heavy heroin user is probably not going
Speaker 1: to use more than three times a day. And so
Speaker 1: to go back to what one of the topics we
Speaker 1: discussed in the previous episode chunking that idea that the
Speaker 1: brain is forming habits get x than Y and Z
Speaker 1: and uh and then forming a shortcut kind of a
Speaker 1: hot key for the brain for behavior encoding the memory
Speaker 1: of usage. Uh, you're you're going to have what you know,
Speaker 1: twenty times uh or more per day that you're enforcing
Speaker 1: that shortcut as opposed to a maximum three times per
Speaker 1: day with the hairin user. Yeah. And Charles Higg, the
Speaker 1: author of UM, the Habit Loop, I think I totally
Speaker 1: slaughtered that. But um, he's talked about this and written
Speaker 1: about this at length, and he says his claim is
Speaker 1: that percent of our decisions every day that's just habit.
Speaker 1: We think we're making these decisions, but really we're just
Speaker 1: responding to environmental cues in these well worn neural pathways
Speaker 1: in our brains. Yeah, because we've discussed before, habits take
Speaker 1: up energy, they take a cognitive power, and we don't
Speaker 1: have a limitless amount of that. So we handed over
Speaker 1: to to routine. We handed over to habit so that
Speaker 1: we'll have some juice to handle the actual decisions that
Speaker 1: are coming at us, and of course that the problem
Speaker 1: with this is that again, your brain, your brain secretry,
Speaker 1: isn't making any sort of like, hey, this could be
Speaker 1: a terrible thing. Don't do this, um, and your prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: your executive functions in your brain are already sort of
Speaker 1: um lessened by the addictive behavior. All right. The next
Speaker 1: thing we have here is prescription medication, one of the
Speaker 1: rapidly growing substances of abuse in the US. Between nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty and nine, abuse of prescription drugs increased four and
Speaker 1: it has about the same amount of usage in America
Speaker 1: as cocaine. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Speaker 1: drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, and among people twenty five to
Speaker 1: sixty four years old, drug overdose caused more death than
Speaker 1: motor vehicle traffic crashes. So the National Institute on Drug
Speaker 1: Abuse goes on to say, by the way, two intend
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent of the drug overdose deaths in the
Speaker 1: US were unintentional, seventy eight percent. And I think that
Speaker 1: this is painting a story here about how prescription drugs
Speaker 1: UH have become so accessible in people are mixing them
Speaker 1: with other drugs or mixing them with alcohol to their detriment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's important to to to to to
Speaker 1: to point out that prescription drugs just because it's prescribed
Speaker 1: does not mean it is necessarily a safe substance of
Speaker 1: Any of these are very dangerou socis. I mean, any
Speaker 1: of these are emphatamines. Uh, and they're not that different
Speaker 1: from the illegal variant, and certainly methemphatamine itself is memory
Speaker 1: serves as schedule to narcotic anyway, which means that it
Speaker 1: becausivably has a medical purpose. Uh. And it makes sense
Speaker 1: to like which which car is going to be faster?
Speaker 1: The one made in a garage or the one made
Speaker 1: uh at at a factory? Right? And what do we
Speaker 1: have with with drugs? Your street drug is often made
Speaker 1: in a garage, whereas your your pharmaceutical product is made
Speaker 1: by a billion upon billion dollars in this tree. So
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a supercharged vehicle. Yeah. And um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that people are aware that there are ways
Speaker 1: that people get their hands on drugs that they shouldn't have.
Speaker 1: There are legal drugs prescribed, and I won't go into that.
Speaker 1: I will say that If you are interested in learning
Speaker 1: more about this prescription drugs, check out the documentary American
Speaker 1: Addict that goes into detail. It's pretty depressing, um, but
Speaker 1: it's also very eye opening about this topic. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and we get back.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the treatment of addiction. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've we've discussed addiction here. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the ways that we treat addiction. We have several
Speaker 1: different approaches that are currently in play, and we're looking
Speaker 1: at some some new methods of tackling in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and before we go into that, we should say, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, rate of relapse is really high for addicts.
Speaker 1: I think this is something most people know. According to
Speaker 1: the National Institute on Drug Abuse, relapse rates for drug
Speaker 1: addicted patients about fort's similar to relapse and those suffering
Speaker 1: from diabetes, hypertension, and asthma and drug addiction should be
Speaker 1: treated like any other chronic illness, with relapse serving as
Speaker 1: a trigger for renewed intervention. So keep this in mind. Um.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this this idea of memory and
Speaker 1: cooding behavior and there are being triggers for that. So
Speaker 1: imagine that you have just completed a program, say from
Speaker 1: heroin abuse, and you get out and um, I think
Speaker 1: I called them before, these neural ghosts, these neural pathways
Speaker 1: in your brain, the sort of cellular scarring that's still there.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to tap into that and have that
Speaker 1: behavior express itself again. A great example of this is
Speaker 1: Philip Seymour Hoffman, which is brought up at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival for the panel of the Craving Brain. They said,
Speaker 1: look at this guy. He was something like ten years
Speaker 1: sober from heroin addiction, went to a rat party one night,
Speaker 1: had a beer, and then something like I don't know
Speaker 1: was it weeks or months later, had died from heroin overdose. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just started him down the path, opened up those
Speaker 1: pathways again in the brain, those those pathways of habit
Speaker 1: and behavior in addiction, and uh, and then they where
Speaker 1: he ended up. Yeah, So you know you're not treating
Speaker 1: something that's easily dealt with here, right, Just I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea of a cat's cradle, right,
Speaker 1: you know, where you take the shoelace tied together and
Speaker 1: you you string it between your fingers and it's all
Speaker 1: the different fingers holding the string out to form this pattern,
Speaker 1: and you can't you know, put a point at one
Speaker 1: particular finger and say that is the cause of the pattern,
Speaker 1: that is the cause of the the overall design here.
Speaker 1: And just as there's no over that one finger you
Speaker 1: can pin the whole design on, there's no one finger
Speaker 1: you can remove, there's no one treatment plan. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a magic bullet against the problem of addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in one sense, um, it doesn't really matter anymore
Speaker 1: if you have genetic dispositions to addiction, if you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of an addiction, because at that point you've
Speaker 1: got habit taken over, you've got the transfer station, there
Speaker 1: are significant changes to your brain, and now you've got
Speaker 1: you know, memory all wrapped up in it. So um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it is a bit of a cat's cradle,
Speaker 1: But the treatments can't really treat a cat's cradle. You
Speaker 1: can pretty much go after individual fingers. Yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no unified treatments. So the most widespread medication right now,
Speaker 1: um is in a antidepressants, because this would address the
Speaker 1: feelings of despair or you know, any sort of pre
Speaker 1: existing condition like depression that may have led to the
Speaker 1: addiction in the first place. So the problem with that
Speaker 1: though is that you would have to really pair that
Speaker 1: with behavioral therapy, because it's not just enough to say,
Speaker 1: here's an antidepressant, and we have another a number of
Speaker 1: other medications that sort of target individual parts of the
Speaker 1: chemical cocktail involved in addiction. UM. We have, for instance,
Speaker 1: one of them of famous being a methodone which suppresses
Speaker 1: withdrawal symptoms and relieves cravings with the people are recovering
Speaker 1: from from heroin, uh, you know, morphine addiction. UM. You
Speaker 1: have other substances such as now trek zone, which works
Speaker 1: by blocking the effects of heroin and other opiates at
Speaker 1: the receptor sites. UM. You have, of course, so when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with nicotine nicotine, you have nicotine replacement therapy,
Speaker 1: where essentially you're still getting the nicotine, just not through
Speaker 1: the cigarette, and that's used to help with the with
Speaker 1: the with with the with cravings and whatnot. With alcohol,
Speaker 1: you have now trek zone, which blocks opiate receptors that
Speaker 1: are involved in the reroarting effects of drinking and in
Speaker 1: the craving of alcohol. UM. So you see all these
Speaker 1: types of medication there Again, they're going after sort of
Speaker 1: a particular point in the chain chain of effect. And uh,
Speaker 1: and but they can't they can't deal with environment. They
Speaker 1: can only deal with with one point in in the
Speaker 1: the chemical reaction, be it in how the brain is
Speaker 1: receiving or how the brain is dealing with withdrawal from
Speaker 1: the substance. And of course that has to have to
Speaker 1: have a behavioral counterpoint counterpoint part in order to succeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in the case of methadone, that itself is highly addictive,
Speaker 1: and it's been to argue that you're just delaying the
Speaker 1: process of rehabilitation. Really you're just moving the goalpost out.
Speaker 1: So what do we have on the horizon in the future,
Speaker 1: And you've got some really interesting things going on. UM
Speaker 1: one is called optogenetics, and are excuse me optogenics And
Speaker 1: this is basically kind of like UM a light sensitive
Speaker 1: molecule that's beamed into the brain so far of rats,
Speaker 1: so rats that are learning certain habits. The researchers can
Speaker 1: use this optogenetics treatment to basically turn on or off
Speaker 1: neurons in the rats brains and block the behavior and
Speaker 1: block the the ability of that rat to sort of
Speaker 1: remember like Hey, I want to go and do this um.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about this is that the rats change
Speaker 1: their behavior in response to different rewards even when the
Speaker 1: light wasn't present. So after they got the initial zap
Speaker 1: with the light, they still didn't return to the bad
Speaker 1: behavior even when a significant amount of time had passed.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is happening in rats right now, not
Speaker 1: in humans. Um. But it plays into this other idea,
Speaker 1: which is electromagnetic magnetic stimulation. Yeah, this is the form
Speaker 1: that this would likely take in the treatment of of
Speaker 1: of human addicts, and certainly this is where the research
Speaker 1: is headed. Um. And and in this we would use
Speaker 1: electromagnetic stimulation outside of the scalp, no surgery required, uh,
Speaker 1: using transcranial magnetic stimulation on these particular parts of the
Speaker 1: brain again to almost uh not to simplify it and
Speaker 1: say it's just like turning a switch on and off
Speaker 1: in terms of addiction, but uh, but but turning off
Speaker 1: that that that that craving, right, Yeah, and increasing the
Speaker 1: neural activity in the parts of the brain that deal
Speaker 1: with executive functions like willpower. Right. So that's what we've
Speaker 1: talked about that that's such a big part of this.
Speaker 1: So then you have you know, willpower being ramped up,
Speaker 1: and you have the addiction behavior being ramped down. What
Speaker 1: you still have to deal with is memory in those triggers.
Speaker 1: And David Lyndon, the neuroscientists and author of The Compass
Speaker 1: of Pleasure, says addiction is a form of learning. When we,
Speaker 1: for example, puff on a cigarette or inject heroin in
Speaker 1: our arm, we are developing associations between the act of
Speaker 1: puffing or the act of injecting all the other sensory
Speaker 1: information that's around the sites and the smells, the people
Speaker 1: were with, the music, we're hearing, the room. We're in
Speaker 1: a situation that surrounds us and the pleasure that is
Speaker 1: produced as the result of puffing on that cigarette or
Speaker 1: injecting that heroin. Well, I hate to invoke the title
Speaker 1: of the movie anymore since it's invoked again in every
Speaker 1: every news article on science that deals with erasing a memory.
Speaker 1: But you kind of have to go eternal sunshine of
Speaker 1: his follows's mind on that particular drug memory because, as
Speaker 1: we discussed in previous episode, uh, the drug memory is
Speaker 1: has has is really firmly encoded. It's not just the
Speaker 1: memory of taking the drug, is the memory of the environment,
Speaker 1: the situation of the drug. All these things tied up
Speaker 1: into it. So yeah, what if you could go after
Speaker 1: that memory, If you could blast that memory sort of
Speaker 1: photon torpedo it, then you could conceivably have a leg
Speaker 1: up on beating the addiction, or you could you could
Speaker 1: just like hose it down with a chemical, which is
Speaker 1: essentially what researchers at the Script's Research Institute have done.
Speaker 1: This is from a Fall two thousand and thirteen study
Speaker 1: published online in Biological Psychiatry. For six days, they had
Speaker 1: rats alternate between one of two rooms, and on the
Speaker 1: odd days, they were put in a chamber let's call
Speaker 1: it Chamber A and given meth. On even days they
Speaker 1: were put in chamber B and given a sailine placebo.
Speaker 1: So a couple of days later, half of these rodents
Speaker 1: were given a choice between those two rooms, and the
Speaker 1: room associated with that meth, of course, was preferred by
Speaker 1: those rats who were injected with myth. But the other
Speaker 1: half of the rodents were then injected with something called
Speaker 1: La trunculin A or lat A, And this is a
Speaker 1: chemical that interferes with actin, and that's a protein known
Speaker 1: to be involved in memory formation. So when they were
Speaker 1: injected with lacta excuse me, latte, the animals showed no
Speaker 1: preference between rooms even up to a day later. Again,
Speaker 1: this is all highly experimental, but it's it's giving us
Speaker 1: an idea that there are certain interventions that can happen
Speaker 1: to address all the different facets of addiction. And the
Speaker 1: researchers do point out that you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about about this particular method being used to just erase memories.
Speaker 1: Willy nilly. They say that you actually couldn't take their
Speaker 1: discovery and array. It's your run of the mill memory
Speaker 1: inside of the brain. Uh. They said, you can only
Speaker 1: use this to get rid of the strong drug associated memories.
Speaker 1: And of course there's gonna be many more studies and
Speaker 1: they will have to be human trials in order for
Speaker 1: this too for the FDA to approve of it um.
Speaker 1: But that gets us into this other territory in which
Speaker 1: the f d A has approved one type of vaccine
Speaker 1: but not another. And when I'm talking about our vaccines
Speaker 1: developed by Kim d Janda, he was on that World
Speaker 1: Science Festival panel of the Craving Brain to block the
Speaker 1: effects of heroin and users, but also block the effects
Speaker 1: of nicotine and users. So guess which one is being funded. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: obviously they're going to fund the nicotine one, because that's
Speaker 1: your that's your kind of your your white collar drug. Right,
Speaker 1: everyone is dealing with nicotine. But heroin, Oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: a dirty that's a dirty drug. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the circus tent, right, that's the
Speaker 1: that's down there with the safety nature. Yeah, even though
Speaker 1: an estimated twelve million to four million people used heroin
Speaker 1: as of two thousand and nine, accorded to according to
Speaker 1: the United Nations Office on Tricks and Crime, and Americans
Speaker 1: uh something like two in two thousand eleven. So obviously
Speaker 1: it's a pervasive problem when we spend a lot of
Speaker 1: money on that. But the vaccine itself stimulates the immune
Speaker 1: system to recognize the substance, and it has to be
Speaker 1: given over a period of weeks, which eventually renders the
Speaker 1: person immune to the drug. Because how do our immune
Speaker 1: systems try work? Right? Our immune systems evolved to deal
Speaker 1: with foreign outside invaders, So our immune system doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: look at incoming cocaine or heroine or nicotine or alcohol
Speaker 1: and say say, oh that's bad. Let's go after that,
Speaker 1: they say, sorry, that's not on our list of suspects.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna go. We're not gonna go arrest the
Speaker 1: right you know. So the idea who are this vaccine is?
Speaker 1: It is it puts those offenders on the on the
Speaker 1: suspect list for our immune system and keeps them from
Speaker 1: crossing a very important border, at least in the case
Speaker 1: of the heroine. Yeah, the blood brain barrier, because that's
Speaker 1: key here. That will actually block any psychoactive effects. So
Speaker 1: in other words, you're not going to get high. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what they found in the rats, or what Genda
Speaker 1: said he found is that they would give the rats
Speaker 1: like uh doses, overdosed quantity, right, Yeah, and the rats
Speaker 1: would survive when they were vaccinated. So of course it's
Speaker 1: not something you would want to try and human trials,
Speaker 1: but um, but it does lead us to this idea
Speaker 1: that once you take the psychoactive part out, the actual
Speaker 1: um blood brain barrier part where it doesn't get into
Speaker 1: your brain and then affect the rest of the system,
Speaker 1: is that you could render this the drug toothless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's important to know that this is not
Speaker 1: like like a lot of other vaccines It's not a
Speaker 1: situation where you'd say, all right, give everybody in the
Speaker 1: population the heroin vaccine and then heroin doesn't work on anybody.
Speaker 1: This would be more of a tool to prevent a relapse.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, but again, the problem here is this digma
Speaker 1: because of course the nicotine one has human trials. It's
Speaker 1: brought to market. Let's look at those polite people and
Speaker 1: the TV commercials dealing with their nicotine problems, right, and
Speaker 1: certainly many of our listeners are dealing with nicotine problems.
Speaker 1: I don't want to cheap in it or anything, but
Speaker 1: it's it's far more socially acceptable. I think of your
Speaker 1: TV version of the guy who's smoking too much, and
Speaker 1: it's just a random guy. It might even be Goofy
Speaker 1: from the Disney cartoons. I finally remember him trying to
Speaker 1: quit smoking on the cartoon. I never saw a Disney
Speaker 1: cartoon in which Goofy had to deal with a heroin problem,
Speaker 1: even though that fits the time period right, the forties,
Speaker 1: and you know perfect, I mean, you could see Mickey
Speaker 1: tying his arm off. I mean, we're making light of this,
Speaker 1: but really, I mean, this is this is something that
Speaker 1: I think is very disheartening, especially for Kim d Janda,
Speaker 1: who came up with a vaccine in the first place,
Speaker 1: for heroin to stop this spread of AIDS, because of
Speaker 1: course the vector here as uh use needles. So I
Speaker 1: think it's got to be uh really just disheartening for
Speaker 1: him to hear from um big farmat there's no market
Speaker 1: for this. There's no market for a heroin vaccine, are
Speaker 1: you kidding? Yeah, it's because again, when you look at
Speaker 1: the huge public health benefit to something like this, it's
Speaker 1: just it's insane. Yeah. And another thing that they said
Speaker 1: on the panel is that this just has to become
Speaker 1: more of the national discussion and that uh that doctors
Speaker 1: need to have medical training on how to talk to
Speaker 1: their patients about addiction, because they say right now that
Speaker 1: they're not trained in that, and that the big joke
Speaker 1: among doctors is that if a patient comes to you
Speaker 1: and says, I drink four drinks a night, you should
Speaker 1: probably double whatever it is that they say, um and
Speaker 1: you and not even really address the problem or the
Speaker 1: situation or dig any deeper. Yeah, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: anytime you're you're you're dealing with the doctor, it's like
Speaker 1: it's not maybe it's not firmly established in the public
Speaker 1: mindset that this is a safe tone and then you
Speaker 1: can actually talk about what you're putting into your body,
Speaker 1: legally or illegally, because it is bottom line essential to
Speaker 1: your health. But you know, I think that if the
Speaker 1: I think that if the medical field approached it in
Speaker 1: a different way, and like, for instance, I went to
Speaker 1: um my doctor and she said, hey, Julia, find these
Speaker 1: tests on you. It looks like you've got some genetic
Speaker 1: predispositions for addiction. I wanted to, you know, just give
Speaker 1: you a heads up or are you in any sort
Speaker 1: of stress loops in your life that you need help
Speaker 1: with or that you're aware of. Then it I know,
Speaker 1: it takes up more time with your doctor, but again
Speaker 1: it's opening up the line of communication and it's taking
Speaker 1: out the stigma because you're talking about it. And if
Speaker 1: this is something that is so pervasive in society, by
Speaker 1: the way, something like all pharmacy suiticals are consumed by
Speaker 1: the US by people in the United States, those are
Speaker 1: a lot of drugs, legal drugs, but still drugs that
Speaker 1: are being being distributed and um and consumed by people.
Speaker 1: So this obviously is is not just a kind of
Speaker 1: aside problem that some people have. You know, I want
Speaker 1: to point out another possible application for the vaccine that
Speaker 1: was brought up the heroin vaccine, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking about rodents that were given this vaccine,
Speaker 1: how they could take essentially almost like a lethal overdose
Speaker 1: amount of the drug and still be fine. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a possibility that the vaccine could be used to treat
Speaker 1: people who are who have overdose symptoms. So health care
Speaker 1: professionals pick someone up or arrive at a scene someone's
Speaker 1: clearly overdosing on on heroin, they can apply the vaccine
Speaker 1: as a curative measure. Yeah, so emergency medicine could really
Speaker 1: benefit from this. But again, I just keep pointing to
Speaker 1: this idea that if you start to talk about it,
Speaker 1: if you start to remove the stigma, then you can
Speaker 1: really get to the behavior part of it, and to
Speaker 1: the root causes of it, the depression, anxiety, whatever it
Speaker 1: is that's going on in a person's life, and treat
Speaker 1: the mental health part of this equation, which is so important.
Speaker 1: And it's a shame that the whole topic becomes so
Speaker 1: political as well, because like even a story like we
Speaker 1: mentioned Phillips seem more Hoffman earlier. I looked him up
Speaker 1: again and was looking at some of the various articles
Speaker 1: about him, and you still see this sort of gut
Speaker 1: reaction from from some commentators where some people you know,
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, well, this is you know, horrible. This
Speaker 1: is a very talented man who struggled with it with
Speaker 1: his dan I don't even want to say his demons
Speaker 1: because that personifies it as something supernatural and not something
Speaker 1: that's based in in in physical illness. Um. But the
Speaker 1: people were saying, oh, this is terrible. We had to
Speaker 1: deal with this disease and it eventually caught up with him.
Speaker 1: And then there's still people who are going to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he was just essentially saying, oh he was just weak,
Speaker 1: Oh he was just this is you know, moral failure
Speaker 1: of his character. He was just another you know, Hollywood
Speaker 1: phony or whatnot. You like, you still see that kind
Speaker 1: of attitude, uh, you know, all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember reading an op ed piece and I can't
Speaker 1: remember if it was Slate or Salon, but there was
Speaker 1: this forty five year old dad with a family who
Speaker 1: wrote about, hey, look, this is a reminder of the
Speaker 1: slippery slope when it comes to what you know, he
Speaker 1: would say brain disease is when it comes to addiction,
Speaker 1: because I was someone who was on the edge and
Speaker 1: a very lucky to have not died with my addictions.
Speaker 1: And I'm forty five years old, and I realized that
Speaker 1: there are many triggers that could cause us just says
Speaker 1: it did with Hoffman. So there you have it, a
Speaker 1: little little luxie into the future. Uh, ways that we
Speaker 1: can deal with addiction, the way the way that we
Speaker 1: might deal with addiction. But again, there there has to
Speaker 1: be enough of investment in the public mindset, um to
Speaker 1: really see this. Uh, this heroin vaccine reached the point
Speaker 1: where it's actually affecting world health. Yeah, and in the
Speaker 1: healthcare system there has to be, um, you know, enough
Speaker 1: support and money there. Um. Do you have any ideas
Speaker 1: about this? Do you have any thoughts about the vaccines
Speaker 1: or any of the other treatments in the stigma? If
Speaker 1: you do, please let us know. Yeah. You can find
Speaker 1: us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That
Speaker 1: is our website, that's the mother ship. That's where you'll
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Speaker 1: It doesn't exist anymore. I don't even remember it. Yeah,
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